Chapter 8
Present
By the time Kip arrived home for dinner, Blythe was deep in concentration over the guest book.
Should she give her mystery guest the ground-floor room with the four-poster bed, or the less palatial rose bedroom?
The first had splendid views across the island, while the slightly more modest second room had French doors leading out into the small sunken garden with a terrace Kip had levelled off, so it was easily accessible for the less mobile.
She heard Kip, mooching about in the hall, probably taking off his work shoes before coming in – the habit of a lifetime, she couldn’t have muck walked across every washed floor and cleaned carpet in the house. When he tracked her down he reeked of wood stain and filler.
‘What do you think, darling? Which one is going to be the one to bag our place in the White Diary?’ she asked absently when he kissed her cheek.
‘Really?’ He laughed, ‘you’re really asking me?’
‘Of course,’ she glanced at him now, he looked…
different, as if she’d spotted him across the room and it took a moment to recognise him.
Silly, she was just so distracted with this White Book business, it really was driving her nuts.
‘I just can’t decide, perhaps I should just keep both aside and let the woman choose for herself when she arrives?
’ She walked to the cast iron fireplace – Kip had put it in years earlier.
It was one of the many finds they had come across together, as they’d scoured every house clearance sale and auction when they were putting the whole place together.
There was no chimney of course, this room had been sliced off to make space for the ensuite.
The original fireplace, a drab old grey slate had cracked when they’d knocked through the wall next to it.
She’d been devastated at the time, but now, she was pleased, because she’d painted the cast iron a pastel pink and it gave her an inordinate sense of joy to fill the hearth with fresh flowers in summertime and pinecones in winter.
It was far nicer than the drab old thing that was there to begin with.
‘Surely, that would be worth at least one gold star? Although, it’s hardly practical, I can’t very well turn away paying guests for the want of making up my mind. ’
‘It’s a good complaint.’ He sounded tired.
‘What’s that, darling?’
‘Well, each room is as perfect as the next…’
‘Oh, yes, I see, of course, I suppose, it’s what Siggy would call a first world problem.’
‘Isn’t it just.’ He muttered under his breath, and she looked down at his feet. His big toe was showing through his sock again.
‘Ah Kip, look at that sock, you didn’t walk around like that all day, did you?’ He was forever pushing out through his socks, that was the price of big feet – that and extra expensive shoes.
‘Course not, I was wearing my work boots.’
‘Duh, I know you were wearing boots, but that can’t be comfortable, come on, take it off.
’ She put out her hand for the sock, because she knew otherwise it would just continue to go through the cycle of washing, drying and folding away and Kip would never complain, never throw it away or do anything to replace it.
‘Okay old mother hen.’ He was making fun of her now.
She’d started darning his socks early in their marriage.
Honestly, otherwise she’d have been buying him new socks every other week.
She knew her friends would think she was bonkers.
It was a matter of principle as much as anything for Blythe.
She couldn’t bear the idea of aiding and abetting those sweat shops on the other side of the world.
‘Never mind your obsession with my toes, what’s for dinner, I’m absolutely famished.
’ And he made a point of sniffing the air appreciatively before she pushed him away playfully.
‘Go have a shower, dinner is in the oven, we can eat when Siggy gets home,’ she called to him as he took the stairs, two steps at a time.
She’d thrown on a casserole earlier in the day.
It was funny, but these days she had to make a thing of keeping the routine of family mealtimes.
She knew a lot of Siggy’s friends went home and never left their bedrooms. From what she could gather breakfast, dinner and tea was consumed while they were immersed in some online game or scrolling endlessly on their phone.
It was downright unhygienic. Blythe believed that carry-on like that could never lead anywhere good.
No wonder every other woman she knew was going around the place with finicky children and eating habits of their own that were nothing less than distorted.
It was far from vegan or keto or Mediterranean diets any of them were raised here on Pin Hill.
Blythe had made it very clear to her, when she’d heard about the carry-on in other people’s houses, that it wasn’t good enough.
She’d heard her own friends talking about how their kids slipped away once they became teenagers, so stealthily, that you hardly noticed until they had gone completely.
Well, she was holding onto Siggy for as long as possible, in every way she could.
*
‘I was talking to Ros Stokes today,’ Kip said when he arrived at the kitchen after his shower.
‘Oh, how is she?’ Ros was one of the few outsiders that Blythe really liked, but she was more like a local than anything else. She’d worked as a ranger for a while before taking up a position as the island goat herder a year earlier.
‘She’s good, you know, Ros, always up to something.’
‘She and Jonah Ashe will be making things official one of these days, I’m sure.’
‘Hmm, probably,’ Kip said, because he had no interest in island gossip, most of it passed him by, even when Blythe made a point of sharing the latest juiciest bits with him.
‘Anyway, she’s running a camp for some of the older kids on the long weekend.
It’ll be a hike up the mountain and then, camping out for the night, a bonfire, caring for the goats, that sort of thing. ’
‘That’d be good for a lot of them, get them off their phones for a while, make them move about a bit,’ Blythe said. She took down a bottle of red wine, poured out a glass for each of them.
‘Yeah, that’s what I said. Ros wondered if Siggy would like to join in.’ He took his glass from her, but his eyes didn’t meet hers.
‘Ah, now, sure what would she want to be going out and climbing up a hill for? You know as well as I do that the place will be full of horse flies and midges and all sorts. Siggy isn’t like those other kids, she is busy, here and in the hotel.’
‘I know that, Blythe, but it’s not just about getting air in the lungs, it’s about the social side of it too.’
‘She can invite people over here, I’m always telling her, she’s welcome to invite any of her friends.’
‘I told Ros she could go.’
‘You didn’t?’ Blythe felt the blood rush from her head. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’
‘Because it’d be good for her.’
‘Good for her?’ She was gawping at him now, the wine that she’d just sipped felt as if it was acid making its way slowly into her stomach. She closed her mouth then, because no words were coming.
‘Yes, Blythe, good for her. You know fine and well she’s the only one never allowed to go anywhere.’
‘That’s absolutely not true.’
‘The discos on the mainland?’ He placed his glass deliberately on the drainer next to the sink and Blythe felt something stir in her.
Kip never, well, hardly ever lost his temper, and on those rare occasions when he had over the years, he’d walked out the door, disappeared for a few hours, come back and mulled for days over whatever was bothering him.
‘She never wanted to go to those bloody discos.’
‘She knew there was no point asking.’
‘What do you think she’s missing out on? You know well what goes on at them, haven’t we both watched Normal People? Dear God, Kip, is that the carry-on you want for your teenage daughter?’
‘Siggy isn’t like that,’ he said in a low voice that sent a chill through Blythe.
‘Don’t be so na?ve, they’re all like that, when they get together – one egging the other on, that’s how it works, you should know that better than anyone.
I’m sure that the rugby scene isn’t immune to groupthink.
I mean, I know that you sporty types aren’t always the brightest, but surely, the basics of herd mentality aren’t too much of a stretch even for you.
’ She said it in a scathing way. Maybe she wanted to win the argument, but she never wanted to hurt him.
‘Anyway, I’ve told Ros she’s going now.’
‘She’s absolutely not.’
‘Blythe, everything about our daughter is not up to you. She’s seventeen, for heaven’s sake, it’s time to start letting her go.’ He ran his hand across his head, a habit that always signalled he was under pressure.
‘Go? Up a mountain? Can you hear yourself? I’m not letting our daughter up a mountain with a crowd of ne’er-do-goods to be eaten alive by every sort of insect under the sun, I’m just not.’
‘Come on,’ his tone had turned softer, as if maybe, he might persuade her.
‘She’s going to be finishing school next year, Blythe, like it or not, she’ll be old enough to leave here.
What are you going to do then? Tie a ball and chain to her leg so she can’t get past the avenue?
There are a whole lot of skills she’s going to need before she goes out into the world and you’re not going to teach them to her by simply showing her how to make a tiramisu. ’